“From your room?” I interrupted her. I couldn’t help myself.
“From our room, yes,” she said tiredly. “It was as if he were practicing a choreography. He wrote everything down in a notebook. And when he wasn’t training, he would sit still, cross-legged on the ground, as if he were meditating or praying, waiting for even the last molecules of fat in his body to melt away. Fasting was no trouble at all for him. Once he told me that his uncle had fasted for one month straight when he was young, and therefore he could easily get by with a cup of broth and some fruit every day. It had become impossible to make him eat anything else. He saw manipulation in any type of food.”
“He’s always been obsessed with those things,” I said. “Since he met Danco, at least.”
And you, I wanted to add, but I didn’t.
“Not to that extent,” Giuliana countered. “By then he refused to eat tomatoes because they hadn’t existed here in Iceland before men introduced them. Unfortunately, nothing edible existed in Iceland before being introduced by man. So he drank broths made from a local herb. If I was the one who cooked them, I would add some meat on the sly. I’m sure he was aware of it, but he pretended not to notice. He was extraordinarily acquiescent. You felt as if you could hurt him, crush him with a wrong word or two. And not just because he was so thin. Still, once he was ready to go in there, after all the training, after he and Jónas had altered his clothes to adhere as tightly as possible to his body to keep him warm, and after we smeared them with fish oil to help him slide between the rocks, he was happy.”
* * *
—
THAT DAY TOO Giuliana waited outside. Maybe she had already said her goodbyes to Bern before I got there; I wouldn’t ask her, not even later on. Jónas accompanied me again. I was more assured, and it took us half the time to reach the end of the cave. I went to sit on the flat rock again, inside that absurd, echoing confessional, and called to Bern.
He answered only after the third or fourth time, when my heart, fearful, was already pounding out of control. His voice seemed fainter, farther away, as if during the night he had slid a few more yards down the frozen incline, where I imagined him shrouded in darkness.
He did not say my name, not immediately, the first thing he said was: “It’s so cold.”
I asked him if he had tried to move his leg, to get up, but he didn’t answer, as if something much more important were weighing on him. He said, “This wasn’t the journey I wanted, Teresa. The journey I wanted was with you.”
But it wasn’t him talking. Bern was no longer there. A specter spoke in his place, an echo of his voice that had remained trapped in that cavity of ice and stone.
For a few seconds there was only the silvery plink plink of the droplets. Finally he cried, “Forgive me!” and those were the last words he uttered, the last sound able to rise to the top of the rock incline, pass through the fissure, and come down to me. As if he had lasted all night and all morning just to emit that one sound.
After that I called and called to him, I don’t know for how long, until a light appeared in front of me, aimed right in my eyes, and arms wrapped around my shoulders, and somehow, maybe dragging me, Jónas took me out of there.
* * *
—
GIULIANA HAD MANAGED to get the tourist visits canceled for that morning, but it was peak summer season, and by afternoon everything was to resume as usual. Toward three o’clock a party of about ten people arrived. I watched them proceed through the lava field single-file, each carrying a helmet and boots in their arms. Did they know that there was a man trapped down there? A man who was dying?
Giuliana stood beside me while one of the guides repeated the explanation about how to conduct themselves in the cave, the same explanation I had heard the day before. I had the feeling she was keeping an eye on me, in case I were to do something rash. But all I did was approach the guide when he finished speaking and ask him if I could join the group. Jónas stepped in, treating me kindly but firmly. His staff member, the other young man, would call out to Bern. If Bern answered, then he would take me inside again.
An hour went by, it seemed much longer. I dug a furrow in the soil with the tip of a twig, covered the groove back up, then dug again, deeper. When the guide reappeared at the top of the metal ladder, it wasn’t me he addressed but Jónas again. He shook his head, and I understood that Bern hadn’t answered.
We went back to the jeep. I sat in back. Throughout the trip I harbored a dull rage toward the tourists, for their cheeriness. Giuliana sat beside me, but her presence gave me no comfort.
* * *
—
BY THEN there was no longer any reason for me to stay in Iceland, but all the same I changed my return ticket once and then a second time. All in all, I stayed in the apartment with a view of the placid surface of Lake Mývatn for two weeks. I called my father and asked him to go to the masseria to take care of the vegetable garden and all the rest. I couldn’t tell him where I was, nor what had happened, but he realized that it had to do with Bern from the way I started crying on the phone, unable to stop. He would leave that same day, he promised. I said I would explain what he had to do once he got there.
I did not return to the cave. Each morning I dressed as if I were going there, I showed up at the jeep’s departure point, but when the tourists started to gather, young couples with a passion for harsh climates, amateur speleologists, overweight women who would likely not even be able to enter, my nerve failed. I felt like an intruder. Then I’d approach Jónas or the guide assigned to the shift and remind him to call to Bern once inside. Eventually there was no need to tell them anymore, they reassured me with a nod, patiently. I imagine they’d stopped calling to him early on, but I clung to the idea that it wasn’t so: there wasn’t much left for me to hold on to other than that perseverance.
It still wasn’t clear to me what Jónas knew about the reason Bern and Giuliana had ended up there, but when the time came he did not insist on reporting Bern’s death to the authorities, as though he sensed that the man who had ventured into that forbidden part of the cave existed and did not exist for the rest of the world. As though he understood that nobody, except me, would come to claim him.
To endure, I took long walks around the lake, in one direction in the morning, the opposite way in the afternoon. Mostly I went alone, but sometimes Giuliana came with me. She had at least partially shed the reserve of our first hours together. I leaned over the water to see if there were any fish, but I never saw anything, only algae swaying below the surface.
* * *
—
THE NIGHT before I left, I was awakened by someone knocking at the door of my room. I stayed in bed, uncertain, wondering if it was a dream, but then there was another series of knocks. I got up and opened the latch. Giuliana was dressed in a jacket and boots.
“Put something on. Come outside, quick.”
Before I had time to ask her why, she was hurrying down the carpeted stairs. I threw on some jeans and a fleece I had bought to get me through all that time there.
The guys were on the lawn. Jónas pointed to something high above. The sky was arrayed with shafts of brilliant green light.
“You never see it at this time of year. It’s a miracle.”
They all had phones in their hands and were looking for the best angle to photograph the sight; they were excited, though undoubtedly I was the only one witnessing that phenomenon for the first time. The green rays seemed to radiate from a precise point on the horizon and from there spread out through the air like smoke. I did not ask if that was the direction of the cave. But when Giuliana said, “It’s for you,” I knew that it was really so.
One at a time they tired of looking and went back into the house. Finally, Jónas and Giuliana also left. The lights in the sky persisted. If they changed, their movement was so slow as to be imperceptible. Back in the room, I raised the pl
astic roll-up shade so I could keep watching them. In the morning, when I woke up, they had vanished.
* * *
—
GIULIANA AND I shared a cigarette in front of the airport. I didn’t want one, but I wanted to prolong that moment.
“Will you stay here?” I asked her.
She looked around at the landscape, as if deciding there and then.
“For now I can’t imagine anyplace else. And you? Will you go back to the masseria?”
“For now I can’t imagine anyplace else.”
She smiled at me. She crushed out the lit part of the cigarette and put the butt, the filter that would take years to decompose, in her pocket. Everything came to an end, and sooner or later it would happen, even to the grief we had in common.
“Maybe you’ll see me show up there one day,” she said.
We brushed cheeks, shyly, then I went into the airport. When I turned around, she wasn’t there anymore.
8.
Every morning, at the masseria, my father would say: “You don’t need me here anymore, I should go back to your mother.” But another day went by and he was still there: he had to help me pick the tomatoes, the door hinges needed to be repaired, or else he was inspired to create a chair with what he found lying around. I’d told him what had happened in Iceland, confusedly, surprised at how bizarre my account sounded, to the point that I began to doubt my own words. But he’d listened to all I had to say, and in the end he held me tightly for a long time, while I cried pressed against him, as I don’t remember ever having done.
As the days grew shorter, darkness forced us to stop our work and we cooked together. After dinner we went to bed early. Though my anguish waited in the bedroom, I knew that my father was nearby, just down the hall. I could hear his snoring through the partly closed doors, the same sound I once found objectionable and that now kept me safe. Then I thought about Bern’s words in the darkness of Lofthellir: “‘I fled from your hand to your hand.’” It had happened to us as well, to my father and me.
When he actually did leave, I was ready to be alone. As I accompanied him to Brindisi he said: “You should inform his parents.”
“I’m not sure about that.”
“They’re his parents,” he repeated, as if that were enough to counter any objection.
Several more weeks went by. I didn’t get many visitors, except those related to work: the vegetable orders on Monday and Thursday, routine maintenance appointments, the helper who came every other afternoon. The tail end of summer was mild, and autumn was reluctant to start; the eggplants seemed as if they would never stop producing, by then they were as tall as saplings. I was outdoors almost all day, always busy; I didn’t mind it. When working, I was able not to think as much, and mostly only practical thoughts. Still, I would sometimes linger mesmerized in the middle of the food forest, staring at nothing in particular. Sooner or later, certain questions would become nagging: What happens now? From where do I pick up the thread? I was thirty-two years old, and that meant an ocean of time to fill. Would I remain on that land forever?
* * *
—
WHEN I SAW the car appear on the dirt track I was stacking wood against the tool shed. A small compact that I didn’t recognize, its front end bashed in by a collision. I approached, slipping off my gloves, and when the car stopped I recognized Cesare. He nodded to me. Beside him sat his sister, who did not greet me until we stood facing each other; then she offered me her small, delicate hand, just as I remembered it from the night of the wedding.
“Would you like to come inside?” I asked. “I think it’s going to rain.”
Cesare opened his mouth wide and inhaled as much air as he could take in. He seemed to savor it, relish it. The smell of the masseria: I knew exactly what he was looking for.
“I’d like you to take me for a little walk around first,” he said, beaming. “Yes, I’d like to see everything, if you don’t mind.”
So I led him through the property that at one time had been his, and explained all the changes to him, the way Bern and Danco had once explained them to me: the water canalization and filtering system, the wall of twigs and straw on which the aromatic herbs grew. Every piece of information seemed to wholly intrigue him. He listened to me with his hands clasped behind his back, then exclaimed: “Magnificent!”
Marina trailed behind us, gazing around blankly, and when he asked her what she thought, she hedged.
“You have resurrected this place,” Cesare said at last, with the solemnity that was his and that would have been ridiculous in anyone else.
We sat under the pergola. He observed the tablecloth with the world map with a blend of amazement and perplexity, and maybe even nostalgia, then he turned that same gaze on me.
“I’ve never found another one that would do,” I said. “Though maybe it’s high time I did.”
I brought out a carafe of water, an open bottle of wine, and some toasted almonds.
“I received your note,” Cesare said. “We received it. Marina is very grateful to you for having informed us. Isn’t that so?” he asked his sister, affectionately touching her arm; she agreed, reticent as before. “That boy was capable of extraordinary exploits,” Cesare went on. “But the discovery of the cave astounded me.”
“I didn’t call you after Nicola’s funeral. I’m sorry I didn’t.”
“Genuine sorrow is worth more than a thousand gestures, Teresa. More than all the phone calls in the world. And I knew you were grieving, I felt your sorrow with me.”
They hadn’t touched either the wine or the water. I should have filled the glasses, but I was somewhat dazed. “And Floriana?” I asked.
“Oh, my Floriana. Grief has poisoned her heart. I wish I knew the antidote to cure it, but I don’t. Patience maybe. Time? I can’t imagine that we will remain separated for much longer, you see. And perhaps the Lord will grant the prayer of an aging man.”
He smiled. What he’d said was true: the last few years had taken a toll on his face, etching lines on his forehead and around his mouth; his kind eyes were somewhat sunken, his hairline had receded, and his hair was now medium length, not as if he meant to let it grow long as it once was, but as if there was no longer anyone to remind him that it needed a trim from time to time.
“And you, how are you coping?” he asked.
I was unprepared for such a straightforward question. “There’s always a lot of work,” I said.
Nodding to himself, Cesare seemed to be considering whether the answer satisfied him or not.
“When are you going to pick the olives?”
“I’m thinking of starting in November. But if the heavy rains come, it’s possible I’ll have to begin sooner. Water in September isn’t good for olives,” I noted, immediately ashamed I’d said it, of having been so arrogant. “But you know that better than I do,” I added.
“There’s a popular saying for that”—he squinted, concentrating—“but I don’t think I remember it anymore.”
All that hollow hypocrisy, that conversation skirting the edge of the precipices that affected us, upset me, especially with him. But we kept on. Cesare asked if I planned to press only the olives picked from the trees or those that dropped to the ground as well. I told him I would sell those on the ground to a local oil press.
“Then you will certainly get an exceptional quality,” he said, and after that we drifted into an awkward silence. I saw him catch his sister’s eye, as if asking her permission, and I saw her tighten her lips nervously.
“Marina and I,” he resumed in a more serious tone, “came to ask a favor of you. We understand that the circumstances of Bern’s death do not allow us to have his body here, physically, and be able to bury him. But you know how important it is for us. Burial is the only way the soul can be set free to look for a new abode. Remember when we buried the frogs out here? The firs
t time you came to visit us at the masseria?”
“Yes.”
“Well, Marina and I are certain that Bern would like his symbolic burial, all we are able to do, to take place here. Don’t you agree?”
“We don’t know if he’s dead.”
“From what you wrote to me, from the way you described it in your note, I seemed to think he was.”
“It’s not possible, I’m sorry,” I repeated, more determined this time, but looking at Marina instead of him.
“It’s a great torment for souls to remain abandoned in a body that no longer functions,” Cesare persisted. “They are prisoners.”
“I understand.” I hesitated, then I said it: “But those are only your ideas.”
And yet his words had evoked with heart-wrenching clarity the image of Bern lying in the cave’s dark chamber, his fractured leg forming an unnatural angle on the ice, the skin of his face rigid, his wide-open eyes the same color as the air and the rock. Bern immune to any evolution or deterioration, for all eternity.
“Would you excuse us a moment, Marina?” Cesare said, standing up. “Teresa, come with me, please.”
“Where?”
“You didn’t take me to see the holly oak, after all this time. Let’s go and sit there for a bit.”
I followed him. Watching him walk stiffly in front of me, I realized that the problem with his hip had worsened, that his gait was irregular. Each time he placed his left foot, it was as if he were falling over it.
We sat down on the bench. Cesare reached out a hand to pick off a leaf, studied its outline, then, frowning, looked at the trunk.
“I’m treating it. The gardener says it’s already better.”
Heaven and Earth Page 37
